It says something that Deadpool vs. Thanos #1 isn’t the strangest comic book crossover to hit the stands this week. Instead, the honor falls on Aliens/Vampirella #1. As much as the concept screams “We randomly threw two darts at the wall,” there’s also a lot of potential to this mash-up. For instance, ever wonder what happens when a vampire tries to drink a Xenomorph’s blood? Unfortunately, apart from addressing that burning question, this first issue isn’t great at realizing the potential of this crossover.
The core flaw with Aliens/Vampirella #1 is that it spends too much time recycling familiar Alien tropes. As usual, there’s a group of scientists on a remote world who discover an ancient facility filled with large, funny-looking eggs. Slowly over the course of this issue they discover what even the most casual Alien fan knows about the Xenomorphs and what they do to their victims. Sure, the characters are all likable enough, but they do little to stand out from the various other protagonists we’ve encountered in these stories. Even Vampirella herself rarely stands out or puts her abilities to particularly interesting use. Perhaps what this book needed was some of the tongue-in-cheek charm of the equally bizarre but far more entertaining Archie vs. Predator.
Only in the opening flashback pages does this issue leave a strong impression. There we see precisely what happens when undead bloodsuckers wage war on the most perfectly adapted killing machine in the universe. Here Javier Garcia-Miranda’s art really shines, showcasing the raw brutality of the Xenomorphs and rendering them in intricate detail. The visual fidelity drops once the story shifts to the present as the story revolves mainly around human characters (and Vampirella) walking and talking. The eerie coloring does help the book capture the tone of the movies to a certain extent.
